Page 11 of Size Game

7

Alex

“Dude, come on. Come on. Dude. Come on, dude.”

“Really, Phil?”

“Yeah. Come on. C’mon.”

I stare at him for a moment.

“You know you wanna go get a beer with me.”

“I promised Sadie that we would order a pizza, watch her new pony movie, then have ice cream sundaes. You wouldn’t want to disappoint Sadie, would you?” I look him right in the eye with a brow cocked.

He bites his lip and stomps his foot like a grade-schooler. “You know Uncle Phil can’t disappoint that little angel.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He laughs and gives me a brotherly punch in the arm. I promise him that we’ll get a beer some other time, and that seems to placate him.

It is true that I have a night planned with my baby girl, but there’s something else—someone else. I can’t seem to get Claire out of my mind. It bothers me some but also fills me with joy. I went into this knowing and believing this would be a one-night stand. Clearly, I was wrong.

I’m not even checking the messages I get from FLICK anymore. I don’t care. I haven’t told Phil that I’ve seen her again, but he seems to know that something is going on. That’s probably why he wanted to go get a beer tonight. Getting a beer always means a deep, meaningful talk like we used to do at the frat house.

Claire is stuck in my mind all day. I shouldn’t like it as much as I do.

Phil sits down across from me. “Talk to me now, bro.”

“About what?”

He looks at me, straight in the eye. He knows that I know he knows what he wants to talk about. I start to tell him about the first night, then about going to her place to drop off the wallet. He is on the edge of his seat, listening intently. I tell him about the party-planning incident. He knows there’s more and prods until I tell him that we had sex in the limousine.

Phil laughs. “You fucking dog!”

“What? It was just a quick fuck.”

“You met this girl for a one-night stand a week ago, man. Nah, there’s something else going on here.”

“Not even.”

Phil starts to say something when my phone rings. I cut him off and look at my phone. He must have noticed the slight twinge in the corners of my lips.

“It’s her, isn’t it?”

“Shush.” I answer my phone. “Hello?”

“Alex!” She seems very happy. Then she starts going over party details and says that she’s found a few possible places where the party can be held that aren’t too bad. She lists off a few names, some of which I have heard of, but there are a few I haven’t.

She continues on and Phil sits across from me making kissy faces. Then he turns around, wraps his arms around himself, and starts mocking me. “Oh, Alex. Oh, Alex!”

I grab a nearby pad of sticky notes and throw it at him. It hits him square in the back of the head, and he spins around. He silently chuckles, and I give him the finger while still trying to listen to Claire on the phone. He just shrugs with a smug look.

Claire talks about how she wants to meet Sadie, which surprises me a little at first as I have sort of lost track of the fact that we were talking about the party. I was just entranced by her voice and stopped processing words. Then she tells me that she always tries to meet the client first, unless of course it’s a surprise party.

I laugh at the little joke, and Phil waggles his eyebrows at me. He then gets up and sits on the corner of my desk, then lies across it as though modeling for a bikini catalog. He looks at me and runs a finger down his chest and whispers, “Oh, Alex. Paint me like one of your French girls.”

I grab a nearby magazine and start swatting him like a bad dog. He laughs and blocks a few of the hits as he rolls off the desk.